The cloud lifted from his brow.  “How kind in you to say it, mother dear! kind to her and to me.  Yes, she is very fond of Max, quite as if he were a younger brother, and it is very natural that she should sympathize with him when in disgrace.”

“And having been so petted and indulged by her father, allowed to have her own way in almost everything, and seldom, if ever, called to account for her doings, comings and goings, she can hardly fail to think my father’s rule strict and severe.”

“True,” Edward responded with a sigh, “and grandpa is a strict disciplinarian, yet so kind and affectionate with it all that one cannot help loving him.”

“So I think.  And now, good-night, my dear son.  I must go; and perhaps your little wife is looking and longing for your coming.  She is very fond and proud of her young husband,” and with a motherly kiss and smile she left him.

Edward paced the floor for several minutes with thoughtful air, then went up-stairs to Zoe’s boudoir.

She was not there or in the dressing-room.  He took up a lamp and went on into the adjoining bedroom.  Shading the light with his hand, he drew near the bed with noiseless step.

She lay there sleeping, tears on her eyelashes and her pillow wet with them.  His heart smote him at the sight.  She looked such a mere child and so sweet and innocent that he could hardly refrain from imprinting a kiss upon the round rosy cheek and the full red lips.

And he longed for a reconciliation, but it seemed cruel to wake her, so it should be the first thing in the morning, he said to himself.

He set the lamp down in a distant part of the room, and prepared for rest.

* * * * *

Max had spent the evening over his books and diary.  His entry in that was a brief statement of his delinquency, its punishment, and his resolve to be more obedient in future.

He had just wiped his pen and put it away, when Grandma Elsie came for a little motherly talk with him, as she often did at bedtime.

He received her with a mortified, embarrassed air, but her kind, gentle manner quickly restored his self-possession.

“I was sorry, indeed,” she said, “to hear that our boy Max had become a breaker of rules, and so caused us the loss of his society at the table and in the parlor.”

“I thought the loss was all on my side.  Grandma Elsie,” he returned with a bright, pleased look.  “I didn’t suppose anybody would miss me unpleasantly.”

“Ah, you were quite mistaken in that; we are all fond of you, Max.”

“Not Grandpa Dinsmore, I’m sure,” he said, dropping his eyes and frowning.

“Why, Max, what else could induce him to give you a home here and be at the trouble of teaching you every day?”

“I thought it was you who gave me a home, Grandma Elsie,” Max said in a softened tone, and with an affectionate look at her.